The service covers news articles appearing within the past 30 days on various news websites. In total, Google News aggregates content from more than 25,000 publishers.[6] For the English language, it covers about 4,500 sites;[7] for other languages, fewer. Its front page provides roughly the first 200 characters of the article and a link to its larger content. Websites may or may not require a subscription; sites requiring subscription are noted in the article description.[8]

On December 1, 2009, Google announced changes to their "first click free" program,[9]["clarification needed] which has been running since 2008 and allows users to find and read articles behind a "paywall. The reader's first click to the content is free, and the number after that would be set by the content provider.[10]

The layout of Google News underwent a major revision on May 16, 2011.

On July 14, 2011, Google introduced "Google News Badges,"[11] which it later retired in October 2012.[12]

Additionally in July 2011, the Sci/Tech section of the English Google News versions was split up into two sections: Science and Technology. It was announced that this section split would be performed on other language versions as well.[13] As of early 2013[update], this split had not been applied to all language versions of Google News.["citation needed]

In June 2017, the desktop version of Google News saw a thorough redesign that according to Google had the goal to "make news more accessible and easier to navigate ... with a renewed focus on facts, diverse perspectives, and more control for users."[14] Yet several options such as the search tools menu were removed along with the redesign, making searches much more difficult. It now uses a card format for grouping related news stories, and as summarized by "Engadget, "doesn't look like a search results page anymore", removing text snippets and blue links.[15]

In March 2005, "Agence France-Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP's photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France Presse".[16][17] It was also alleged that Google ignored a "cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not. Google now hosts Agence France-Presse news, as well as the "Associated Press, "Press Association and the "Canadian Press. This arrangement started in August 2007.[18] In 2007, Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, however the articles are not permanently archived.[19][20] That arrangement ceased on December 23, 2009 when Google News ceased carrying Associated Press content.[21]

In 2007, a Belgian court ruled that Google did not have the right to display the lead paragraph from French-language Belgian news sources when Google aggregated news stories.[22]

Newspapers representing more than 90 percent of the market in Brazil opted out of having their links appear in Google News according to reports, resulting in only a "negligible" drop in traffic.[23] Some Europe-based news outlets have asked their governments to consider making Google pay to hosting links. In Germany, their lobbying lead the introduction of the "ancillary copyright for press publishers in 2013. In October 2014, a group of German publishers granted Google a license to use snippets of their publications "gratis; the group had first claimed that such snippets were illegal, and then complained when they were removed by Google.[24]

In December 2014 Google announced it would be shutting down the Google News service in "Spain.[25] A new law in Spain, lobbied for by the Spanish newspaper publishers' association "AEDE, would require that news aggregators would have to pay news services for the right to use snippets of their stories on Google News.[26] Rather than add advertisements to the news site, Google chose to shut down their service, and remove all links to Spain-based news sites from international versions of the site.[27]

(deprecated as design has changed on June 2017) Google News provides searching, and the choice of sorting the results by date and time of publishing (not to be confused with date and time of the news' happening) or grouping them (and also grouping without searching). In the English versions, there are options to tailor the grouping to a selected national audience.

Users can request e-mail "alerts" on various keyword topics by subscribing to "Google News Alerts. E-mails are sent to subscribers whenever news articles matching their requests come online. Alerts are also available via "RSS and "Atom feeds.

Users used to be able to customize the displayed sections, their location on the page, and how many stories are visible with a "JavaScript-based "drag and drop interface. However, for the US site, this has been disabled in favor of a new layout; roll-out of this layout is planned for other locales in the near future. Stories from different editions of Google News can be combined to form one personalized page, with the options stored in a "cookie. The service has been integrated with Google Search History since November 2005. Upon its graduation from beta, a section was added that displays recommended news based on the user's Google News search history and the articles the user has clicked on (if the user has signed up for Search History).

This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2013)

On June 6, 2006, Google News expanded, adding a News Archive Search feature, offering users historical archives going back more than 200 years from some of its sources. There was a timeline view available, to select news from various years.

An expansion of the service was announced on September 8, 2008, when Google News began to offer indexed content from scanned newspapers.[28] The depth of chronological coverage varies; beginning in 2008, the entire content of the "New York Times back to its founding in 1851 has been available.

In early 2010, Google removed direct access to the archive search from the main Google News page, advanced news search page and default search results pages. These pages indicated that the search covered "Any time", but did not include the archive and only included recent news.

During the summer of 2010, Google decided to redesign the format of the Google news page, creating a firestorm of complaints.[29]

In May 2011, Google cancelled plans to scan further old newspapers. About 60 million newspaper pages had been scanned prior to this event.[30] Google announced that it would instead focus on ""Google One Pass, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites".[31]

In August 2011, the "News Archive Advanced Search" functionality was removed entirely, again generating complaints from regular users who found that the changes rendered the service unusable.[32] Archival newspaper articles could still be accessed via the Google News Search page, but key functionalities such as the timeline view and ability to specify more than 10 results per page were removed.

On September 7, 2008, "United Airlines, which was the subject of an indexed, archived article, lost and later not quite regained US$1 billion in market value when a 2002 "Chicago Tribune article about the bankruptcy filing of the airline in that year appeared in the current "most viewed" category on the website of the "Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper.[33] Google News index's next pass found the link as new news, and Income Security Advisors found the Google result to be new news, which was passed along to "Bloomberg News, where it was briefly a current headline and very widely viewed.[33]

^Krishna Bharat, "And now, News", The Official Google Blog, January 23, 2006. "We're taking Google News out of beta! When we launched the English-language edition in September 2002, we entered untested waters with a grand experiment in news browsing – using computers to organize the world's news in real time and providing a bird's eye view of what's being reported on virtually any topic. By presenting news "clusters" (related articles in a group), we thought it would encourage readers to get a broader perspective by digging deeper into the news – reading ten articles instead of one, perhaps – and then gain a better understanding of the issues, which could ultimately benefit society. A bit more than three years later, we offer 22 regional editions in 10 languages, and have a better sense of how people use Google News". Accessed June 19, 2008.

^"Google News Becomes A Publisher". "Information Week. August 31, 2007. Retrieved April 26, 2008. "Because the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, U.K. Press Association and the Canadian Press don't have a consumer Web site where they publish their content, they have not been able to benefit from the traffic that Google News drives to other publishers", Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, explained in a blog post. "As a result, we're hosting it on Google News".

^"Original stories, from the source". Google. Retrieved April 26, 2008. Today we’re launching a new feature on Google News that will help you quickly and easily find original stories from news publishers – including stories from some of the top news agencies in the world, such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press – and go directly to the original source to read more.

^Pepitone, Julianne (January 11, 2010). "Google News stops hosting AP stories". CNN. Retrieved January 12, 2010. Google News has stopped hosting new articles from the Associated Press the search giant confirmed Monday, in a sign that contract negotiations between the two companies may have broken down.

^"Bad news for Google in Belgium". International Herald Tribune. September 22, 2006. Retrieved September 25, 2007. The earlier decision required Google to stop displaying extracts of French and German-language articles from Belgian newspapers. The majority Dutch-language press is fully included in Google News

^"Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time". Google. September 8, 2008. Retrieved September 8, 2008. Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.